This is in response to Random Goblin's comments on a post I made yesterday, about the strains within the Republican party.
Could the Left have a lesson to learn from the foibles of the Right?I don't know precisely what RG means here, but I will comment that in this particular area I don't think the two parties line up very well.
Since the 1970s and before the Republican Party has grown progressively more conservative so that now Conservativism is the official philosophy of the Republican Party. Conservativism is a relatively compact philosophy - smaller government, lower taxes, traditional values. Now obviously there are fractions who believe that smaller government is the key and others who believe that traditional values are essential, but the similarities are more important than the differences (usually).
On the Democratic side of the fence, on the other hand, we have liberalism as our philosophy. Modern American Liberalism is not a compact philosophy. And Liberalism has balkanized so as to include dozens of submovements. For example, Civil Rights for Blacks, Civil Rights for other Ethnic Minorities, Civil Rights for Homosexuals, Feminism and Woman's Rights, Environmentalism, Small Business, Labor Unions, Farmers, the Inner Cities, Consumer's Right Movements, the Aged, and so on and so forth. All of these different groups have different goals and different plans.
So when the Republican Party is fractured it's a bigger deal. They aren't supposed to fracture, whereas the Democrats are almost always fractured.
Or at least that's my take.
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